Professional Documents
Culture Documents
1. Consolidate a central online hub for accountability and promote it and signpost
clearly.
2. Create a navigational badge to be carried by all accountability destinations so
that they can link to each other and back to the central hub.
4
C
5
3. Audit the existing accountability blogs, and consider whether to cut back,
extend or consolidate.
4. For blogs which do not carry accountability responsibilities, clarify their role and
communicate to blog owners where to direct accountability issues that arise in
their area.
5. Across BBC social media activities, provide staff with a clear place to direct users
to tackle accountability questions.
• Allow users an opportunity to set the agenda within these spaces by filtering
and promoting each other's contributions and ideas
• Build a model of "networked accountability" around these brands by cultivating
panels of audience experts
• Transfer the "audience representative" role and powers enjoyed by presenters
of feedback programmes to online hosts
Give Users Control of the Accountability Agenda
We recommend that the BBC take seriously the idea that the accountability should be
driven by the audience – allowing licence fee payers in effect to hold the BBC to
account. This should be facilitated either by the adoption of new technical platforms
and/or by the definition of clear ombudsman-style powers for blog hosts.
Commission User Research
The BBC needs to understand, on an ongoing basis, the demographic biases of
contributors to different accountability platforms, in order to take them as seriously as
they deserve and to make any allowances for how this might distort the picture of user
views.
Increase Ownership of Senior Management
There needs to be a culture change inside the BBC such that it becomes an accepted
and expected part of the job of senior editorial management to read online social
media output associated with their linear brands, as well as being aware of the
competition.
Engage Outside bbc.co.uk
We recommend that the BBC should consider to what extent conversations which are
now conducted on bbc.co.uk could be conducted externally instead. Regardless of the
outcome, the BBC also needs to spend more time reading and engaging with online
commentary around itself and its brands.
Empower a Central Team
We recommend explicitly charging a team with supporting social media activities
around accountability, trained to be aware of recurring issues and able to support blog
authors and production staff and able to step in as hosts where necessary.
5
C
5
Tighten up Complaints Process
We recommend that: